http://www.yonaoshi311.comArchitecte /建築家/ArchitectLess than two months after the catastrophe, Toyo Ito, at the Sendai Mediatheque, was explaining that we ought to rethink our architecture from scratch by taking nature in account. He endured a real shock. One year later, he is awarded the “Golden Lion” at the Venise architectural biennale for his “Home for all” project, community living centers for refugees from tsunami striken areas into temporary housings. The first “Home for all” were built in Sendai, then at Rikuzen Takata in association with other architects.

Architectural Iconoclast Wins the Pritzker Prize

Published: March 17, 2013

…..But Mr. Ito is also proud of the building’s significance as a project that was meant to withstand an earthquake. (It won a Golden Lion Award at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.) A video of the inside of the building taken by someone under a table during the earthquake in 2011 went viral.

“The building shook and swayed violently; everything cascaded from shelves and desks onto the floor,” the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Ceiling panels appeared to swing drunkenly overhead. But the Mediatheque did not collapse. It stood firm against the massive seismic forces that were tearing other buildings apart; the basic structure did not fail.”

Mr. Ito has been active in the recovery effort. He recruited three young architects to help him develop the concept of Home-for-All, communal space for survivors. In his book “Toyo Ito: Forces of Nature,” edited by Jessie Turnbull and published last year by Princeton Architectural Press, Mr. Ito writes, “An architect is someone who can make such places for meager meals show a little more humanity, make them a little more beautiful, a little more comfortable.”

The citation said Mr. Ito consistently couples his personal creative agenda with a sense of public responsibility. “It is far more complex and riskier to innovate while working on buildings where the public is concerned,” the jury said, “but this has not deterred him.”

Though perhaps not as well known as architects like Rem Koolhaas or Frank Gehry, Mr. Ito rose to prominence with the completion of his stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, built for the World Games in 2009.

And he has received his share of awards, including, in 2010, the Praemium Imperiale, which recognizes lifetime achievement in areas of the arts not covered by the Nobel Prizes.

But Mr. Ito said he doesn’t worry about status or architecture competitions. “We cannot predict what we will win or we won’t win,” he said…….

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